Fantasy Basketball: 6 last-minute tips to help you nail your drafts

· Yahoo Sports

The NBA season starts next Tuesday, and if you're like me, you will be knocking out your final fantasy basketball drafts this weekend. Here are six tips to help you cram last minute and dominate your drafts!

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Rankings aren't one-size-fits-all, but like average draft position, they are another data point that can help fantasy managers come draft time. It's impossible to predict the correct outcome for every player. However, you can get a feel for which players are higher or lower than the ADP. If I'm higher on a player, I've likely mentioned them in my sleeper, breakout or fade articles. Get all of those, plus my rankings by format, in the 2026-27 fantasy basketball draft kit.

If you want more, the Fantasy Ultra Playbook is a comprehensive resource that'll provide additional insight into my draft strategies, player projections and more for the upcoming season.

Want to know where players are being drafted? The Draft Analysis tool is the easiest and best way to do so. By evaluating a player's Average Draft Position (ADP), Yahoo analyzes the market across its draft platform to show when players are selected. ADP is a valuable data point when building a fantasy team because you'll want to base decisions on the latest market trends. Which, at times, may be viewed as an overcorrection (an opportunity to capitalize on falling value) or a reaction to new information (such as the Warriors managing Stephen Curry's workload).

Pulling the ADP thread some more, mock drafting helps you understand how to adapt during positional runs and how the market may view a player as you approach your drafts. With preseason in full swing and news dropping daily, things change quickly. If you get your draft position early, practice selecting the players you want to build your team around. Have contingencies in case you get sniped. If you don't have a draft position until 45 minutes before you draft, then try mocking from different draft slots to get a feel for each part of the draft. It's very helpful and there's a reason why analysts are constantly mocking — its's not just for content. Knowing what'll be available and where to reach or pivot is key to gaining an edge in your drafts.

NBA insiders like Shams Charania, Jake Fischer and James Edwards III are worth following for the latest news that may impact your fantasy basketball draft. From injuries to player absences, projected starting lineups and more, it's critical to understand the latest news so you can go into drafts with the most up-to-date information possible. For fantasy, Rotowire NBA and UnderdogNBA are the most reliable news aggregators for tracking how the insider information might affect your fantasy teams.

I prefer to evaluate players on per-game value rather than total value because injuries are, unfortunately, part of fantasy basketball. Players like Mikal Bridges often rank higher in head-to-head formats because their availability is a valuable asset. Using Bridges as an example, he finished 16th in total value last season, but if you look under the hood, he finished 40th in per-game value. So he got a significant boost by simply playing more games.

On the flip side, Stephen Curry finished ninth in per-game value a season ago, versus 88th in total value. When Curry played, he was a top-10 player. The problem was that he played only 43 games. With Warriors head coach Steve Kerr admitting Curry will be load-managed this year, Curry's per-game value inflates his current ADP. We know who Curry is; he's one of the greatest players (and fantasy players) of all time. Fantasy basketball often comes down to balancing ceiling outcomes and variance.

Just because someone might get hurt doesn't mean you shouldn't draft them. The per-game output gives a better read on how impactful they can be. Total value is a reliability factor that still matters, but per-game is the stronger signal. Basketball Monster is a great resource that lets you toggle between per-game and total values from last season.

Are you wondering who might be last season's Amen Thompson, Keyonte George or Nickeil Alexander-Walker? Or who makes the All-Star leap? Well, I often use betting markets to determine those candidates. Evaluating player award markets and their odds of winning provides another data point. The markets I'd be most interested in are Most Improved Player, MVP, Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year. There are also prop markets for most points scored, most assists, most rebounds and more.

It may seem trivial, but I'm confident you'll see several of the names listed for those markets emerge as viable candidates to win their respective awards and be valuable fantasy assets this year.

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